In the manufacture of tissue products such as bath tissue, a wide variety of product characteristics must be given attention in order to provide a final product with the appropriate blend of attributes suitable for the product's intended purposes. Improving the surface properties of the tissue product, such as surface smoothness, while maintaining the Sheet Bulk, is a continuing objective in tissue manufacture, especially for premium products. These objectives must be further balanced with operational efficiency. One means of balancing these properties has been to manufacture the webs by a through-air drying process. Throughdrying provides a relatively noncompressive method of removing water from the web by passing hot air through the web until it is dry. More specifically, a wet-laid web is transferred from the forming fabric to a coarse, highly permeable throughdrying fabric and retained on the throughdrying fabric until it is at least almost completely dry. The resulting dried web is softer and bulkier than a wet-pressed sheet because fewer papermaking bonds are formed and because the web is less dense. Squeezing water from the wet web is eliminated, although subsequent transfer of the web to a Yankee dryer for creping is still often used to final dry and/or soften the resulting tissue.
When the single ply tissue products, however, are formed into a rolled product, the base sheets tend to lose a noticeable amount of bulk due to the compressive forces that are exerted on the base web during winding and converting. As such, a need currently exists for a process for producing a single ply tissue product that has both softness and bulk when spirally wound into a roll. More particularly, a need exists for a spirally wound product that can maintain a significant amount of Roll Bulk and sheet softness even when the product is wound under tension to produce a roll having consumer desired firmness.